Coal mining brings prosperity to Doylestown area

Friday

Aug 3, 2012 at 4:00 AM

By Paul Locher Staff Writer

DOYLESTOWN -- It's difficult today to picture Wayne County as a coal mining center, but as early as 1840 coal mines began to spring up around Doylestown in Chippewa Township, and in over 105 years 51 separate commercial coal mines were operated within two miles of the public square in Doylestown.

The mining of coal brought tremendous prosperity to Doylestown and the coal miners themselves brought a kind of lusty notoriety to a remote area of the northeastern part of the county that became known as Rogues' Hollow.

The hollow attracted hordes of tough coal miners, many of them Irishmen who had dug the Ohio canal and saw the mining industry as steady work. With them came a colorful rough-and-tumble lifestyle and all of the trappings, including the development of numerous honky-tonks and bars in what is today a quiet and scenic valley.

There was an old legend around Rogues' Hollow that said a man could walk all the way from Clinton to Hametown, a distance of seven miles, and never have to set foot above ground. Indeed, the vast network of coal mine tunnels honeycombed the hills north and south of Doylestown, from Massillon north toward Wadsworth. However, the greatest concentration of mining was right around Doylestown itself.

Coal mining started in the earliest days of settlement, when pioneers in the area found coal deposits right at the surface of the ground from which they dug fuel by hand to heat their homes.

The earliest commercial mine was the Galehouse Mine, which was opened just west of the hollow in 1840 by David Galehouse. The following year Philip Philpst opened the Chippewa Mine south of the B&O railroad line. After that, one coal mine after another opened up. Mines would flourish for a while, and eventually be abandoned when the seams of coal became too thin to be worked profitably.

In the early days, miners were paid between $1 and $1.50 per day and 50 cents per ton on the coal they could dig. Miners were assigned to a "room" or gallery in the mine and typically worked in heavy duck pants and a sweatshirt.

Each miner was assigned a number which he marked with chalk on the coal car he was filling, so that the check weight man could weigh the coal and give the miner credit for it. Some miners would be lucky in getting a good section of the coal seam which was easier to mine, while others would not fare as well.

As they worked back from the passage, the coal vein would get thinner and miners would have to bend over more to get the coal. The average thickness of a seam in the Doylestown mines was about four feet, and even that took a lot of stooping.

Source: "Rogues' Hollow, History and Legends" by Russell W. Frey

Sunday: Types of Wayne County coal mining

Reporter Paul Locher can be reached at 330-682-2055 or email plocher@the-daily-record.com.